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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467906">College Daze</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zahri/pseuds/Zahri'>Zahri</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, Gen, POV Outsider, Retired Katsuki Yuuri, SkyGem Retirement Challenge, Social Media, Yuuri returns to university after an extensive skating career</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:47:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,661</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467906</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zahri/pseuds/Zahri</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Staying undercover while retired is easier than it sounds. Most people look, but they don't see.</p>
<p>Three times Yuuri Katsuki's background is completely overlooked by his classmates.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>65</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>610</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Love these stuff UwU, Outstanding Outsider POVs</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Several scenes from the scenario of a Skygem Retirement AU, while skipping the usual reveal sequences.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Andrew was walking through the rows of O-Week stalls after class, listening to pitches from the various clubs, groups and societies with the amusement of an adult who already had one degree under their belt. Some of the other students from the sports psychology class he had just left were also trailing through the stalls, looking around.</p>
<p>A guy in his early thirties was cheerfully talking to passers by about the fun of casual league hockey. He suddenly stopped and stared. “Katsky? Kat is that YOU?” he asked incredulously.</p>
<p>One of the guys from his last class - Alex thought he had introduced himself as Yuuri - waved and said “Brad!” in a cheerful tone of voice. “What are you still doing in Detroit?”</p>
<p>“Coaching, these days. What are you doing here? Last I heard you were living the dream in St Petersburg.”</p>
<p>“Just moved back so I can do my Masters. I’m used to studying in English at this point, and well, we can get married here.”</p>
<p>Brad grinned. “There might have been rumours circulating that you two were finally tying the knot. I have to say, congratulations, man, for all of it. When I think back to when we were at college together last time…”</p>
<p>Yuuri interrupted, with a blush on his cheeks. “Thank you. I can’t believe it myself some days.”</p>
<p>“So,” Brad continued with a gleam in his eyes, looking around at the people loitering nearby. “Can I interest any of you in a social-league hockey tournament? Casual, we’re happy to teach you all the skills if needed. Kat, you want to play?”</p>
<p>Andrew looked at Yuuri oddly. “You used to play ice hockey?” He didn’t have the frame or the look. The man was lanky and had been reasonably quiet in class.</p>
<p>Yuuri turned red. Brad guffawed. “Oh hell no. The last time Katsky here wore hockey skates, he would have been all of 20? And it was for a dare.”</p>
<p>“21,” Yuuri corrected. “And this is proof of why I don’t make drunken bets any more.”</p>
<p>“From what I remember, you did just fine.”</p>
<p>“Brad, not here,” Yuuri said firmly. “It’d be lovely to catch up with you, but I’m monopolising you right now and I see plenty of freshmen you should be talking to instead.”</p>
<p>“Well, my number hasn’t changed. Have you still got it? Erica and I would love to have you two over for dinner and talk about old times.”</p>
<p>“Brad, Victor knows Phichit. You’re not going to surprise him. But yes, I still have your number. Actually, speaking of Phichit, can I have a quick photo to send him?”</p>
<p>Yuuri handed his phone (which had a blue case with an abstract glittery swirl design on the back) to Amy, who carefully took several photos. Brad reached over the counter, slinging an arm around Yuuri’s shoulder, while Yuuri leaned back into his arm, both of them grinning. The two men then pointed at each other, putting a hand against their face and opening their mouths in mock shock.</p>
<p>Yuuri reclaimed the phone and smiled at the pictures, his fingers flickering over the phone. “Thank you.” He looked around, a little pink in the cheeks. “I’ll see you later!”</p>
<p>It was interesting, Andrew thought, that Yuuri had come back from Russia to study in the States at the exact same university. He certainly didn’t look or sound Russian, but his very mild accent must be due to having studied here previously.</p>
<p>Then he put it out of his mind as he kept wandering the stalls.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. The hockey skates incident. So. College age boys, drinking at a party: there is sledging between the figure skaters and the ice hockey players over their boots and the relative usefulness of each. Dares are made. A fair amount of alcoholic courage is involved. Yuuri ends up demonstrating what figure skaters can still do in hockey skates the next day, due to one of the dares. It is rather more than Celestino would prefer that Yuuri do in skates that have no toe pick. Poor Celestino. Yuuri's badassedness was assured with the hockey boys.</p><p>2. Brad is planning to regale Victor at dinner with the full Exploits of Yuuri In Detroit stories, to thoughtfully embarrass Yuuri as a welcome back. Victor has already heard practically all of them from Phichit.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A group from class were exchanging contact details for an upcoming assignment.</p><p>Yuuri looked mildly embarrassed. “Oh! Yes, I’ve got an Instagram, but I don’t use it much. Your best bet is honestly to text me or use WhatsApp - I don’t tend to notice messages otherwise.”</p><p>“Can I follow you anyway?” Amy asked, pulling out her phone and flicking open the app. “What’s your handle?”</p><p>“Katsudont.” He spelled it out carefully. “It’s on private, but I don’t mind if you follow it.” Amy quickly found the account, which had a profile pic of a very fluffy-looking poodle. She angled her screen towards Yuuri. “This one?”</p><p>He nodded. She clicked follow.</p><p>Later that evening, after noticing that he had approved her, Amy scrolled casually through Yuuri’s Instagram feed. </p><p>Yuuri liked dogs.</p><p>There were a lot of dog pictures, most of them featuring the same two poodles: one a quite elderly looking standard poodle and the other a much younger champagne coloured toy poodle. </p><p>Poodles looking cute. Poodles out for a walk. Videos of poodles doing tricks (mostly captioned “What a Good Girl!”). Poodles lying down flopped on various rugs and blankets. Poodles running along the sand, fetching sticks out of the water.</p><p>There were also plenty of pictures of other dogs that Yuuri had clearly met while out walking his own dogs, most of them describing what good dogs they were.</p><p>Interspersed between the dog pics were photos of other things. There were the inevitable food pictures: a few coffees, the occasional fancy-looking dessert, pots of tea, some spectacular looking salads. There were scenery shots. There was the sporadic carefully posed art photo. There were not very many photos featuring Yuuri or other people. The captions for various photos were a mix of English, Japanese and Russian, often with the text written in at least two languages.</p><p>There were a few pictures of Detroit surrounds with descriptions about how nice it was to be back. Before that, there was a series of glorious beach and mountain photos that were tagged as being in Japan. The photos often included the dogs and what had to be Yuuri’s family, including three identical preteen girls. </p><p>There was a very sweet photo series of Yuuri with the three girls, all rugged up, sitting in a stadium with the girls looking excited, followed by a picture of the three girls leaning over to a blonde mop-haired boy sitting next to them, with all four kids pulling ridiculous faces. It was captioned “I took the Triple Jumps to Stars on Ice as a treat. It’s been a while since I got to watch an ice show in person! We ended up sitting next to Sasha so I had to introduce them to each other; look out everyone.”</p><p>There was one picture of three reusable coffee cups clustered together, sitting on top of a receipt that had a message handwritten in what looked like Cyrillic lettering scrawled on the bottom. The caption for the picture had ☕☕☕, a crying face 😭 and text in Russian; clicking translate gave the message as “We’ll miss you too; see you in December!” followed by a location tag for Pulkovo Airport, wherever that was. </p><p>Another photo that actually featured Yuuri had him standing in the foyer of a theatre in a very sharp suit, with a stern looking Russian woman on one side and a delighted looking Japanese woman on the other. The next photo had the Japanese woman and Yuuri being hugged by a young woman dressed in a tutu. The caption read: “As Minako-sensei was in town, we of course had to go to the Mariinsky Theatre and surprise Hina. We are so proud of you, Hina! I still don’t think Minako has forgiven me for not pursuing ballet, so the fact that you did makes life a bit easier for me.”</p><p>But the vast majority of pictures of food were of a single dish; a mess of egg and crumbed meat on top of rice that cropped up surprisingly regularly. The picture was often posted with nothing more than a #katsudon hashtag; there were occasionally more text saying things like “Okaasan’s is best” or “Yurio earned this one”.</p><p>It certainly explained Yuuri’s screen name; he clearly loved the dish. And so did his followers: any picture tagged with it had dozens of comments underneath it mostly saying “!!!!” or “You earned it!” or “Jealous!” or emojis of thumbs up 👍 and medals 🏅🥇 and 100s 💯.</p><p>In fact, the only picture that seemed nearly as popular as the katsudon pictures was one of the dramatic art shots posted back in March. It consisted of a close up of five golden rings threaded onto a striped wide grosgrain ribbon, set on top of a scratched red plastic surface next to a bunch of flowers. Two of the rings were a simple identical pair, and the other three looked more fashionable. The background of the photo was heavily filtered and out of focus. The caption on the picture read “I still can’t believe this happened. I fulfilled the terms of that stupid, stupid contract; we can now officially get married. 😉 #whatsroundandgold”. The comments consisted of a lot of screaming, people saying “Congratulations!” “You champion!” “Five!” “He only kisses gold!” “You match!” and posting long strings of rings 💍💍💍💍💍 or gold medals 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇.</p><p>So Yuuri had recently got engaged before moving to the States. That was sweet.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. Victor and Yuuri are very in-love idiots and decided to extend the whole "I'll marry you when..." joke out to the required five Worlds wins for Victor's coaching contract, because organising weddings is a lot of effort and waiting until they were both retired meant they weren't quite so locked in on dates around the skating calendar.</p><p>2. Hina is another one of Minako's students - part of the reason she auditioned and is currently dancing in Russia is because Minako and Lilia have been in more communication over the past half dozen-or-so years due to Yuuri being based in St Petersburg.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The course coordinator had been spamming their uni emails about a Women in Professional Sports conference that was being held on campus. They were expected to attend several of the lectures and panels as part of their coursework. </p><p>Amy found herself sitting between Heidi and Yuuri from her classes at a panel on “Differences in career opportunities and access to prize money across sports”. It wasn’t really her sort of thing, but it was another box ticked on the list of panels they were expected to attend. Yuuri had seemed oddly enthusiastic about this one over some of the other options, so they’d come here.</p><p>One of the panellists, a retired figure skater who’d introduced herself as Sara Crispino, leaned forward and spoke into her mike. “While my sport does have a heavily female focus and theoretically has equal balance in competitions and prize money, the higher proportion of women to men participating in the sport still provides imbalance. For me, one of the most striking factors of figure skating with a twin brother was the difference in expectations for our career progression. I was expected to advance to Seniors sooner than Michele was. My career was expected to start and finish sooner, over a shorter period of time, as there was always going to be younger skaters coming up with fresher knees and more flexibility.” She paused as the audience and other panel members laughed.</p><p>“Let’s take my Olympic medal as an example. At 23, I won an Olympic Bronze medal at Pyeongchang, while commentators and sports journalists were still questioning Italy’s decision to send me to a second Olympic Games at my ‘advanced’ age, right up until the medal ceremony. Yuna Kim, with even better career results than I achieved, retired at 23, shortly after winning her second Olympic medal at Sochi. Whereas over in Men’s Singles, the season that Victor Nikiforov turned 23 was his first grand slam season and the start of his five year streak as world champion. And while very few people in my sport would begrudge Nikiforov his title as living legend - and I say that as someone who has had to listen to his disappointed competitors after many an event -” Sara again paused for laughs, her purple eyes sparkling, “there are plenty of other examples of high ranking male singles skaters whose careers spanned well into their mid and late 20s or even to their early thirties. Ladies’ singles skaters still competing at 25 are generally massive outliers coming from countries without any upcoming younger skaters ready to take over the slot.”</p><p>Amy noticed Yuuri rubbing his forehead with one hand while Heidi giggled softly on the other side. One of the other panellists, Amelia Wu, an artistic gymnast, said “While I don’t disagree with your premise that women have a faster, shorter career, it has to be pointed out that you could have picked less of an outlier in your sport than Nikiforov.”</p><p>“But that’s the thing. I won my only Olympic medal at 23, and I was considered old. Victor Nikiforov won his first Olympic medal at 17 in Turin, and his final two medals at Pyeongchang at age 29. That’s four Olympics over 13 seasons. The current Olympic gold medallist in Men’s Singles was also 29 years old when he took back to back Olympic gold at Beijing. This is a pattern, where longer careers are expected from the men.”</p><p>“Women are expected to compete as ‘adults’ earlier. We’re generally the younger half of pairs and ice dancing couples, sometimes with a multi-year age gap, and placed in more vulnerable situations because of it. There are more women competing for rankings than men. When a new pairs couple is established, it’s generally the male skater who is auditioning several female skaters, not the other way around. And while the balance of power is more even than some of the other sports here tonight, women still don’t have the same career opportunities as men.”</p>
<hr/><p>After the panel, the three of them wandered over to the coffee cart, to grab something before the next panel. As Yuuri was waiting for his order, Sara Crispino, from the panel, swooped down on them, grabbing and hugging Yuuri from behind. “Yuuri! It’s so good to see you!”</p><p>Amy and Heidi looked at each other a little bemused. Heidi was biting her lip. Yuuri turned around in Sara’s arms and smiled at her, hugging her back. “Good to see you too. It’s been ages!”</p><p>“Did you like the panel? I didn’t realise you’d be here. I almost jumped in my seat when I spotted you in the audience.”</p><p>“Oh, you know, it was for my degree. I’m here with classmates. Let me introduce you: this is Amy and Heidi.”</p><p>Sara let go of Yuuri and turned to shake hands with both of them. “Lovely to meet you. It’s always fun to meet other friends of Yuuri’s.” She had a gorgeous smile that she focused on them both. </p><p>“So, Yuuri. How do you know an Olympic Bronze Medallist? I thought it would have come up in class if you knew elite athletes,” asked Amy curiously, looking between Sara and Yuuri.</p><p>Yuuri turned bright red and scratched the back of his neck. “Well, it didn’t really seem relevant. Sara’s Sara. I don’t really think of her as her list of awards.”</p><p>“Have you ever even touched an Olympic Bronze Medal, Yuuri?” says Sara, looking amused and mocking. </p><p>“Sara!”</p><p>“Oh yeah, I forgot. Oops.” She grinned, her purple eyes sparkling. “I think even his Wikipedia page forgets that one at times.”</p><p>Yuuri had a resigned expression on his face.  “As you can probably tell, we’ve known each other a long time - since our teens, in fact.”</p><p>Sara looked at Heidi and Amy for a moment sympathetically. “Yuuri’s one of the most modest people I know. He doesn’t like to boast. But do you mind if I kidnap him for a bit? We don’t get many chances to see each other these days, and I want to catch up.”</p><p>“Oh, of course,” said Heidi. “Go ahead. Yuuri, we’ll see you at the lecture at 4pm?”</p><p>“I’ll meet you there,” Yuuri said, as Sara dragged him off by a wrist.</p><p>“Come on. I’ll find us somewhere quiet where nobody will ask for autographs.”</p><p>“I can’t believe you used Victor as an example of an average male skater in your panel. He’s the most decorated skater of all time,” complained Yuuri as they disappeared into the crowd.</p><p>“Well, who else should I have used? You?” retorted Sara in a laughing voice.</p>
<hr/><p>When Yuuri reappeared later for the lecture, he looked a little tired, but very happy. </p><p>He was also clearly unwilling to answer questions about exactly how he knew Sara Crispino, so they didn’t pry further. </p><p>Given the fact that Yuuri had said they’d met as teens, Amy figured that they must have crossed paths in sport at a junior level or something. Yuuri was probably embarrassed by his friend’s much more successful career.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>1. Has Yuuri ever touched an Olympic Bronze Medal? Yes. Victor has one from the main event at Pyeongchang. It's the medal "forgotten by everyone". </p><p>Actually, for the heck of it, Victor and Yuuri's medal tallies for their various Olympics in this story (we are running with the real world locations):<br/>Turin: Victor has a gold from Men's Singles.<br/>Vancouver: Victor has a silver from Men's Singles.<br/>Sochi: Yuuri placed 8th. Victor has a gold from Men's Singles and a gold from the Team Event.<br/>Pyeongchang: Yuuri has gold from Men's Singles; Victor has bronze from Men's Singles and a silver from the Team Event.<br/>Beijing: Yuuri has gold from Men's Singles. Japan does not have the pairs skaters to get any sort of decent Team Event score. Victor is very retired.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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